Feds open antisemitism probe at Md. school district after complaint by conservative activist

Two Jews affiliated with Montgomery County Public Schools wrote an opinion piece earlier this month with a warning: If their school district didn’t start doing a better job addressing antisemitism, it could become the target of a federal Title VI investigation.

Now, based entirely on the details of their piece, the Department of Education has indeed launched such an investigation into the populous and diverse suburban Maryland district. It’s one of three new investigations by the department’s Office of Civil Rights announced this week, joining others at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Eden Prairie Public Schools in Minnesota.

But the piece’s actual authors had nothing to do with the federal complaint. Instead, unbeknownst to them, a non-Jewish conservative activist more than 200 miles away named Justin Samuels filed the complaint with the department and cited the op-ed as his evidence.

“This is news to me,” Margery Smelkinson, a Jewish parent of four in the district and one of the opinion p iece’s co-authors, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency when reached for comment about the investigation on Monday.

Smelkinson and Lisa R. Miller, a Jewish teacher in the same district, cited multiple allegations of antisemitism in the February 2 piece they wrote for MoCo360, a hyperlocal news site.

They wrote that the district sent a “whispered and mealymouthed” message to families after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel; that administrators had condoned a pro-Palestinian student walkout laced with antisemitic chants; that some educators have suggested the attacks were fabricated; and that Jewish students have faced Holocaust denial and comments like “Hitler should have killed more Jews” from their peers.

The district’s failure to address these incidents, they wrote, “poses a potential legal risk under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” The law prohibits discrimination at federally funded institutions across several categories, including “shared ancestry.” Since October 7, Title VI has also served as a popular avenue for activists to push for investigations concerning alleged antisemitism at colleges and K-12 schools. The Department of Education has opened dozens of such investigations since that date based on similar complaints.

Yet Samuels, a conservative screenwriter in New York, was the one who filed the complaint against Montgomery County’s district. The government opened its investigation Monday, according to a letter from the education department.

“As an advocate for equality and justice, I am deeply troubled by the documented cases of discrimination that have occurred,” Samuels wrote in his complaint. He shared a copy of the complaint letter and the department response with JTA.

“Montgomery made no apparent efforts to ensure the safety of Jewish students,” Samuels told JTA when asked why he filed the complaint. “This is a case where it needs federal intervention to put procedures in place to protect Jewish students and to ensure no group is left out of Title VI.”

Representatives for the school district did not return JTA requests for comment. The Department of Education does not comment on active investigations but says they are not an indication of a complaint’s merit.

Samuels is Christian (he claims distant Sephardic Jewish ancestry), and says his larger goal in targeting campus antisemitism is to go after diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, known as DEI.

“The way I think of it, the way to confront discrimination, including antisemitism, is to get rid of that across the board,” he told JTA. “By its nature, DEI violates civil rights laws on multiple accounts, not just on antisemitic or Jewish issues. So I basically say, get rid of DEI.”

The Montgomery County investigation is the third Samuels personally has triggered, after complaints at The New School in New York City and the University of California, Davis, neither of which he has any personal connection to. He has separately filed lawsuits at several institutions to challenge policies related to affirmative action and gender-based admissions: for example, he has sued Bryn Mawr College, the historic women’s school, for not admitting men.

Samuels is one of a growing number of political actors, often on the right, who have taken an interest in filing Title VI antisemitism complaints. Other individuals who have filed similar complaints include Zachary Marschall, the Jewish editor-in-chief of the conservative publication Campus Reform, who has filed 21 complaints and prompted eight investigations to date.